Tag: wildfires

❝ Canada loses 20 times more forested land to fires and invasive bugs each year than it does to harvesting wood for industry — and Canada’s lumber association says climate change is making it worse.

❝ Derek Nighbor, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, says he believes developing plans to address the impacts a warming planet is having on Canada’s forests needs to be a priority.

“We spend a lot of time looking back at history and trends but we (have) got to be looking forward and doing some modelling in terms of the warming climate and how do we stay ahead of this so we can ensure healthy forests for the future,”…

❝ Nighbor said Canadians have to take time to figure out what the forest looks like in the future.

Or they could follow the American model and put a government in charge that couldn’t care less about environmental causes and effects. Especially if that consideration negatively affected profits – short-term – for corporate owners.

The number of dead trees in California’s drought-stricken forests has risen dramatically to more than 102 million in what officials described as an unparalleled ecological disaster that heightens the danger of massive wildfires and damaging erosion.

Officials said they were alarmed by the increase in dead trees, which they estimated to have risen by 36 million since the government’s last survey in May. The U.S. Forest Service, which performs such surveys of forest land, said Friday that 62 million trees have died this year alone….

Scientists say five years of drought are to blame for much of the destruction. The lack of rain has put California’s trees under considerable stress, making them more susceptible to the organisms, such as beetles, that can kill them. Unusually high temperatures have added to the trees’ demand for water, exacerbating an already grim situation…

Although California enjoyed a wet start to the water year in Northern California, the central and southern parts of the state remain locked in what federal officials classify as “extreme” and “exceptional” drought.

Sooner or later – hopefully, the former – folks will realize that climate change means more than a couple paragraphs about global warming. Distorted climates produce untypical environments, often ending in disaster.

❝ Airlines generally have strict policies when it comes to flying with animals, but in the wake of the recent wildfires in Fort McMurray, Alberta, some have broken their own rules. Canadian North and WestJet airlines have altered their policies to help local pets escape the devastation alongside their humans.

❝ The massive fires have forced 80,000 residents to evacuate the city, some having just enough time to leave with their beloved pets in tow—never mind the regulation crates and carriers. “Due to the unusual circumstances we were able to bend the rules to accommodate these animals,” a spokesperson from Canadian North told The Huffington Post Canada.

More than 20,000 hectares of forest were charred. But in the middle of the devastation, a group of cypresses was still standing tall and green.

When a fire swept through an experimental plot in Andilla, in the Spanish province of Valencia in 2012, it gave researchers the perfect opportunity.

The plot, which was part of CypFire, a project financed by the European Union, was established during the 1980s to test the resistance of more than 50 varieties of Mediterranean cypress to a pathogenic fungus.

After the fire event of 2012, it also provided further anecdotal evidence of the peculiar resilience of the species in the face of fire.

Botanist Bernabé Moya and his brother, environmental engineer José Moya, both from the department of monumental trees in Valencia, had been involved in the project for several years.

“On our way to what we knew would be a Dante-esque scene during that tragic summer, we felt deep sadness at the thought of losing a plot of such value to the conservation of biodiversity,” Bernabé Moya told BBC Mundo.

“But we had hope that perhaps some of the cypresses had survived.”

“When we got there we saw that all the common oaks, holm oaks, pines and junipers had completely burnt. But only 1.27% of the Mediterranean cypresses had ignited.”

The fire in Valencia led to a three-year international study to find the reasons behind the resilience of the species and discover if it could provide buffer zones to hinder or prevent the rapid spread of wildfires…The study was published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Environmental Management…

The lab tests were performed by scientists from the Forest Fire Laboratory at INIA-CIFOR in Spain, and the Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection in Florence, Italy…

A crucial difference of the new tests is that they were performed not only on dead dry samples but also on live fine twigs with leaves taken from different crown heights, which revealed one of the key traits of the species: its high water content.

“We observed that the Mediterranean cypress, because of the particular structure of its leaves, is able to maintain a high water content even in situations of extreme heat and drought, and this is a very favourable starting point concerning fire risk,” explains Gianni Della Rocca.

“The cuticle is thick and the stomata are arranged on the inside and protected side of the scale-like leaves and therefore less subject to high water loss”…

The litter on the forest floor, made up of small fragments of leaves, also forms an intricate and compact layer and is slow to decompose.

“The thick and dense litter layer acts as a ‘sponge’ and retains water, and the space for air circulation is reduced”, says Della Rocca.

Plantations with selections of cypresses have already been made in Valencia, Spain, and Siena, Italy, to further research the role of crown structure.

“In a few years, we will have cypress barriers and observations at real scale,” Mr Della Rocca says.

Bravo! RTFA for more details, explanation of factors operating as a fire barrier.

In the end, Ira and Carolyn Hodge drove out with some photos, their clothes, their horse and their dog, Harley.

Their home took seven years for them to build and contained everything they owned – vehicles, mementos from their parents, memories. All of it was reduced to fine ash when the fire swept down the high sides of the densely forested gorge that bottoms out at Canyon Creek in Grant County, Oregon, six hours’ drive east of Portland.

“It was a monster,” Ira says. “A beast.”

He and Carolyn were helping a neighbour hose down their house when it became clear the fire was moving with astonishing speed towards them. “We had five minutes to get out,” Ira recalls. They tossed the few things they had gathered in their car, rounded up their frightened horse and fled over a wooden bridge that burned behind them.

Ira has since talked to experts who came up to survey the damage. They said that the flames may have reached 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit – hot enough to melt copper and aluminium. They sifted through the rubble and there was almost nothing left.

Harley recovered just one possession: a charred bone he had buried somewhere in the yard.

When you drive south out of John Day, up into the canyon towards the Malheur national forest, the flattened homes and the blackened Douglas firs and ponderosas tell this summer’s story.

Wildfires are capricious, and some houses are untouched. But those that the fire found were razed, and the forest it burned will take decades to recover.

Thirty-six homes were destroyed in Grant County on 14 August. That night, the Canyon Creek Complex fire became the most destructive in Oregon for 80 years. The national media glanced and moved on, but the fire is still burning on just over 105,000 acres. That’s about 10 times the size of Manhattan.

In Oregon as a whole, there are 11 large fires burning on 435,799 acres. In Washington there are 14 burning on 900,000 acres. This season – which is still in full swing – has seen 1,422,880 acres burned in the two states, or 2,223 square miles, an area just a little smaller than the state of Delaware.

More than 11,000 firefighters are still in the field. Firefighting resources in the American west are completely committed, and both states have called out their national guardsmen to help contain the blazes. Firefighters have come from as far away as Australia and New Zealand to pitch in, and three firefighters died while in duty.

RTFA. These fires have become an annual national emergency. People are to blame, habits and carelessness are to blame, short-term weather is often to blame and, yes, climate change plays a significant role.

That may be hard to understand for someone who has never had their home or community threatened by a wildfire; but, it is true.

I do not count climate change deniers as relevant. It’s hard to count them as useful citizens of Earth.

Thanks to California’s historic four-year drought, some specialists are now referring to frequent wildfires as a “new normal” for the state. For the past two years, Los Angeles-based photographer Stuart Palley has been chasing these flare-ups to capture their unusual beauty.

“The fires move fast and you need to get there on the first night of the fire to capture its most intense behavior,” Palley told Quartz. “Two years ago I left my own birthday party early to go photograph a fire.”

Taken with a long-exposure or under a starry night sky, the 27-year-old’s shots of flames and smoke engulfing hills, forests, roads and homes are hair-raisingly gorgeous.

Some of the most dangerous moments in nature may also be beautiful. One more tightrope for a serious photographer.

Lightning strikes in the lower 48 U.S. states will increase about 12% for every degree rise in Earth’s average temperature, potentially sparking more wildfires, according to a new study.

The new estimate was based on calculations of convective energy and precipitation from future thunderstorms, and fits three independent data sets chronicling past strikes, according to the study, published online Thursday in the journal Science.

“You need two ingredients to make lightning in a storm,” said the study’s lead investigator, David Romps, a climate scientist at UC Berkeley. “One of those is that you have water in its three phases — vapor, liquid and ice — coexisting in the cloud. And the other is that the storm clouds be rising quickly enough to loft that liquid and ice into the atmosphere and keep it suspended. So we’ve built our proxy around those two ideas.”

Previous formulas were built around predicted cloud heights and did not account for as much of the variance in actual strikes as the new proxy does, according to the study. The new proxy explains about 77% of the variance in strikes.

It’s only conjecture; but, you would have to think an increase in lightning strikes will forge an equivalent rise in the number of wildfires – lightning causing about half of all wildfires. Not a feature of climate change that anyone in mountain and forest country looks forward to.

Congress took a five-week summer break without deciding whether to provide $615 million in additional money to fight wildfires this year, punting the debate into the fall.

Senate Democrats were unable late Thursday to secure 60 votes to advance a $3.6 billion emergency spending bill for a vote.

The bulk of that money was for the Obama administration to handle the influx of unaccompanied minors along the Southwestern border but it also had $615 million for the U.S. Forest Service and the Interior Department to fight fires. That would have eliminated the need for “fire borrowing,” or transferring money from other activities including efforts to prevent fires

Last month, along with requesting emergency money, President Barack Obama asked Congress to add wildfires to the list of natural disasters eligible for disaster assistance. That move would eliminate the need for the government to dip into wildfire-prevention programs to pay ever-increasing firefighting costs.

The right-wing clown show running the Republican Party won’t respond to that request until they sort out appropriate guidance from the Old Testament, the ghost of Joseph Goebbels and someone who channels Ayn Rand.

Conservative ideologues contribute as little of use to society as an epoch of plague.

This tale needs no introduction. It is a wonder of American journalism, a superb work of narrative journalism – worth awards. I thank the Atlantic for publishing it and the special skill dedicated to the supplements part of the online edition. I thank Brian Mockenhaupt for his writing.

Click to enlarge — DoD/Eric Harris
A C-130H Hercules drops a line of fire retardant in West Texas on April 27, 2011

It’s around 5 p.m. on a warm Sunday in April 2014, and there is a 1,000-acre wildfire burning in Northwest Texas. The area is under a “Red Flag” warning, meaning that high winds and low humidity are likely to make the fire extremely difficult to fight. By 10 p.m. the fire is just 60 percent contained.

April is near the peak of the region’s winter-spring fire season, and the Texas A&M Forest Service is working hard to stay one step ahead of its wildfires. Using NOAA’s monitoring tools, the agency’s Predictive Services team watches for environmental patterns that signal rough days ahead.

The 14-member Predictive Services department commands about $1.2 million, less than 2 percent of the Forest Service’s total budget, but it’s a key part of the agency’s wildfire response. Its findings underlie many of the preventive and proactive measures the state takes to defend against its sometimes cataclysmic fire seasons…

Predictive Service head Tom Spencer checks in routinely with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, making note of shorter-term weather predictions, longer-term climate models, droughts and other data. NOAA’s Fire Weather monitoring tool provides him with detailed forecasts for regions across the United States, including a 7-day forecast and hourly updates on conditions that may influence fire activity. Spencer also relies on NOAA’s drought monitors, which track drought outbreaks and provide perspective on drought scope and severity around the country…

On that particular April Sunday the agency was helping tackle at least six infernos, but this fire season has been a fairly moderate one for Texas. Around this time three years ago there were 1.5 million acres burning every day for about three weeks straight.

RTFA for the story of the systems brought to play on Texas wildfires. Understand what fire-forecasting has on offer especially for local and rural fire departments with nothing like the resources needed to fight a major wildfire.

Interesting stuff. Useful – like most real science. So far, most Texas politicians seem to be staying out of the way.